Re: Old Nindic Object Pronouns

--- David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...> wrote:

> So essentially these all are...clitics?   Very
> interesting.   Reminds
> me a little of Middle Egyptian, which had three
> different types
> of pronouns, one of which (or, one type of which)
> worked in a
> similar way to what you describe for Old Nindic.
> One of these
> I just can't wrap my head around, though:
I really dont know if they're clitics or not. Clitics,
imply to my at least, that they're attached to a word
with little or no morphophonemic changes occuring to
either clitic or host word. If this is the case (which
I'm not sure it is), then these can't be clitics.

Object pronouns change the form of the host in alot of
ways:

nyd "not" (imperative negative)

 nyd-i   "not-me"
 nyde-th "not-you"
 nyd     "not-him"
 nyde-d  "not-her"
 etc.

(nyd becomes nyde- sometimes)

oid- (verbal prefix, as in: oidpuili "to find")

  oidu-i   "me"
  oidu-th  "you"
  oid      "him"
  oidu-id  "her"
  oid-nait/oi-nait "you" (plural)
  etc.

(the prefix is: oid-, oidu-, oi-)

enu(d)- (verbal prefix, as in: enudidi "to
understand")

  enus-i "me"
  enus-t "you"
  enud   "him"
  enud-id "her"
  enu-n   "us"
  en-nait  "you" (plural)

 (the prefix is: enud-, enus-, enu-, en-)

So anyways, I dont know if this can be described as
cliticization. It seems more like some stem: a
particle or prefix, plus an inflection affix.



> First of all, how does this reduplication work?   Is
> it a reduplication
> of the initial consonant prefixed to a prefixed
> /e-/, or is just a
> coincidence that both /i/ and /a/ become [e] when
> reduplicated?
> (Does "e" stand for [e] or [@]?)   Maybe it's just
> that something that
> looks so cliticky in other places is being infixed
> in between a reduplicant
> and its base that's throwing me off.
Well, the reduplication takes the initial consonant of
the verb and places "e" after it. This is taken
directly from some Latin verbs and most Greek verbs:

makhomai "I fight"  ->  memakhemai "I have fought"
leipo "I leave"     ->  leloipa    "I have left"


> Or perhaps, if it worked just like all the rest,
> then the reduplicated
> part is actually a preposition.
This is essentially what happened, yes. At one point,
pre-Old Nindic, the reduplicated syllable was merely a
morpheme of some type that was part of the verb. Later
on, it became reanalysed as a ...sort of verbal
prefix, on par with the prepositional verbal prefixes
that already took the pronouns as affixes. This let to
a brief period in which the reduplicated syllable took
affixes as well. However, since language change has a
lot of abortive starts and stops, this change didn't
last very long, with the sound changes obliterating
most reduplication syllables and finally the
replacement of the old reduplicated perfect with a new
formation.

> To use the  woefully outdated term "morpheme"*, one
> might think of the reduplicant as an empty morpheme
> which means "perfect", and it takes the object
> clitic, but gains its phonological specification
> from the beginning of the closest available CV
> sequence, which would be the beginning of the
verb...

Basically, except..it gains the C not the V. The V
being always /E/ or "e".
>
> It probably all comes down to the questions: (a)
> What is a word in Old
> Nindic?, and (b) what are the criteria for what a
> word is in Old Nindic?
Ha...I couldn't tell you. Mostly a word probably can
consist of four things:

 1) a worn down phrase:   ny "not"
   *ne:' ay (ye)  "it is not that"

 2) an inherited compound:  dalchuith "rainbow"
   *ndalka-khukta "bridge-rain"

 3) a simple word:  reci "to run"
    *rokye

 4) a new compound (like a verb and a prefix)
    per-reci "to surround"

That probably doesn't help much.


Elliott


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail